Check out the Vaunt, the first cool smart glasses

Wearables have been the hot button in the consumer technology market for quite something with different companies such as Google, Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Peeble, Microsoft and others all duking it out to put an electronic gadget on any other part of your body.

While Apple has found some success with the Apple watch, the others haven't been as fortunate. Samsung's Gear S have yet to sell in their millions, Microsoft's effort with the HoloLens is still years from consumer market and Google's Glass effort is pretty much a failed product. While the Google Glass pretty much failed but its more or less the inspiration behind Intel's foray into smart glasses with the Vaunt. Intel has taken a less is more approach in making the Vaunt, gone is the camera, microphone and LCD display. Intel has gotten rid of everything that would have made the Vaunt look more like a gadget than just a run of the mill everyday eyewear.

The Intel Vaunt for the most part consists of the frame, lens, a very low power laser built into the right stem of the frames. The Vaunt works by shining a red monochrome image onto a holographic reflector on the glass's right lens, the image is then reflected into the back of your eyeball, directly onto the retina. This makes it indistinguishable from regular glasses to other people as there's nothing to give it away not even the laser. One could easily peruse through his notifications without anyone been none the wiser about it.

The left stem houses the electronics which helps in keeping the Vaunt balanced. The Vaunt weighs about 50g which keeps it light enough to be comfortably worn for long periods like regular glasses. The battery life is said to be really good and offers all day usage of about 18 hours. The Vaunt manages this feat by offloading most of the processing to the companion app which can be installed on an Android or iOS kinda like almost every wearable device in the market.

What makes the Vaunt shine is that it's designed to be non-intrusive, the information shown never displayed in one's field of vision rather it's display at lower right. Like most wearables, the Vaunt would use for receiving notifications, reading & responding to messages, turn by turn navigation, and whatever app developers can dream of (Intel is offering an early access to developers sometime this year). Hopefully the Vaunt would translate to any actual product (Please Apple license this product, I promise I'd buy it) 🤞.